Shlomo Yitzchaki, today generally known by the acronym Rashi, was a medieval French rabbi and author of a comprehensive commentary on the Talmud and commentary on the Tanakh. Acclaimed for his ability to present the basic meaning of the tex...

Averroës is the Latinized form of Ibn Rushd, a mediæval Andalusian Muslim polymath. He wrote on logic, Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy, theology, the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence, psychology, political and Andalusian classical...

Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis. He was the...

Nicholas of Kues, also referred to as Nicolaus Cusanus and Nicholas of Cusa, was a cardinal of the Catholic Church from Germany (Holy Roman Empire), a philosopher, jurist, mathematician, and an astronomer. He is widely considered one of the...

Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was an Italian Renaissance philosopher. He is famed for the events of 1486, when at the age of 23, he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy and magic against all comers...

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, known as Erasmus or Erasmus of Rotterdam, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, social critic, teacher, and theologian. Erasmus was a classical scholar and wrote in a pure Latin style. Among h...

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He was for many years an official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilit...

Giulio "Delminio" Camillo was an Italian philosopher. He is best known for his Theatre of Memory, described in his posthumously published work L’Idea del Theatro. Camillo notes that L’Idea del Theathro is concerned with ‘the eternal aspect...

In Praise of Folly (Encomiun Moriae in Latin) was written in 1509 by the Dutchman Erasmus of Rotterdam when he was guest to his English famous friend Thomas More,or Morus if you prefer, the author of the celebrated book Utopia. Given intern...

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Lord of Montaigne was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiogra...

Giordano Bruno was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist. He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then-novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars w...

Sir Francis Bacon achieved fame as an English philosopher, statesman, and essayist. He was knighted in 1603, created Baron Verulam in 1618, and finally created Viscount St Albans in 1621; the peerage titles became extinct upon his death. He...

Jakob Böhme was a German Christian mystic and theologian. He is considered an original thinker within the Lutheran tradition, and his first book, commonly known as Aurora, caused a great scandal. In contemporary English, his name may be spe...

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy", and much of subsequent Western philosophy is a respo...

John Wilkins was an English clergyman, natural philosopher and author, as well as one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was Bishop of Chester from 1668 until his death. Wilkins is one of the few persons to have headed a college at...